Through the Shadows
by VulkansNodosaurus
Summary: Medusa is a churning world, a planet deeply affected by its nearness to the Eye of Terror; and that, perhaps, is what the Iron Hands ran from, in the general direction of mechanical madness. But through the millennia, Medusa's soul never fell; and the Tenth can never truly escape their home. Written November 2011.


The sun had long set over this land, never to rise again. A tectonic shift- typical for Medusa- had long ago buried it under millions of tons of rock. Moans echoed across the vast chamber ceaselessly, rebounding and adding onto themselves with each step.

Xanpat found the continent accidentally. The Devastator had traveled below for another reason. But the Wyrmflame, the legendary heart of Medusa's history- the maybe-mythical rock of infinite heat- remained lost, and even a revered veteran of the Iron Hands Chapter of Space Marines, that which called Medusa its homeworld, could not uncover it again. Xanpat had accepted that now; perhaps it was hidden too deep, or perhaps the Warp-flux that propelled the planet's runaway tectonics masked its thermal signature too much.

He exited the tunnel, boldly striding towards the sound of voices. And then he stood on a precipice, overlooking a grey vista. A petrified forest stretched forward, far beyond the vision of an unaugmented human- and even with Xanpat's bionic vision, the cavern seemed endless, there filled with a muddy lake, there rising or falling in elevation.

"This is-"

Land never dies. Matter and energy can disappear into the swirling maelstrom of the Warp, but concepts and beliefs remain constant there. And land is both- a physical place and an ideal, a manifestation. So close to the Eye, the two interweave.

"This is magnificent."

Xanpat said that, thinking of no one in particular but feeling the need to pronounce it, to record his thoughts; and then the moans came. One moment he was an elderly miner-woman, one whose children had all either become Iron Hands or died trying, one now destitute and lonely; the next an overseer, brutally dictating how work should be done and executing those that displeased him; then a farmer, trying to eke out an existence on a merciless world without relying on imports. Then there were dozens more, thousands more, millions more. The echoes reflected and refracted off the walls, staking a blinding spear into Xanpat's brain.

He was everyone. Thus, everyone walked together. He no longer saw the spires of rock that had stoically endured millennia of elemental torture before him, nor the grey curtain of the walls around him. Rather, he saw a billion scenes played out over tens of millions of lives, each as broken as a mirror's shard yet as real as the mirror's texture. He was falling now, but he did not feel the weightlessness; he felt a billion other touches, though, from a weapon's to a mother's to a rock's and over again. He did not recognize the shadow that began to fall onto him. How could he? His concsiousness was melded to a world's pulse, to an Atlantis' population. There was no chink in that armor for reality to crawl through.

And then impact, and the reliable signal of an implant in the back of his brain. It awakened a memory- a memory of standing in the Chapter's halls, of putting on his own power armor for the first time. And then Xanpat forced his way in.

He was himself once more, or would be. He was a Space Marine of the Tenth, and by Ferrus Manus' teeth, he would take back his mind! He was an Iron Hand, an Astarte. None of the wheezes had that. None of them were him.

The voices fled, and Xanpat reasserted himself. Above, unnoticed, the shadow grew larger.

He was standing on the valley floor now, and the stone towers peppered the space ahead. They were many-hued, though tones of white and orange predominated. It was a table of circles, from which sounds bounced and bounced again, forever circling, forever rushing.

What were they- daemons, souls, something less? Xanpat didn't know, and though curiosity was not an emotion to be fought, he did not feel any urge to investigate. From time to time, a moan would reverbate in his head again, and there was no need to attract the spirits' attention.

He stood unmoving, and from a distance one could mistake him for one of the rocks; but he was not trying to camouflage himself. He was simply waiting, watching the shadow- for so long lying below his conscious mind- rear itself and explode across the ceiling. Cracks splattered, marks on a scribe' paper. Then the letters connected, forming words and a web.

A moment later, the ceiling fell-

Land never dies. When a collapse occurs, the surface may seem to fade into nothing, replaced by virgin ground; but in truth the new earth always holds much of what graced the old, either physically or spiritually. The inhabitants of Medusa understood that, once, but primarchs change everything.

A moment later, the ceiling fell, and only Xanpat's helmet saved him from being crushed.

A pair of Devastators, members of Xanpat's squad, walked across the broken surface towards him. The voices rushed upward, only briefly possessing each of them, spiraling towards the new cavity. There they floated, and there they stuck. Xanpat felt them permeate the exposed mineral layers; and after that, who knows?

"Extraction team. What happened?"

"No new trail for the Wyrmflame- but this is what I found instead."

The Sergeant sighed, a throaty exhale amplified by the metallic neck that he had possessed ever since some xeno on the Eastern Fringe had broken his fleshy one. "What does this give us? It is a giant cavern, perhaps; one might even consider it beautiful, though I consider such matters to be subjective. But what benefit does it have?"

Xanpat could not respond, and he simply walked with his battle-brothers to the shuttle. Above, Medusa's frail sun broke through its ashen clouds, a rare occurrence. Some clans considered those moments to be the times when the daemons of the Eye could see, and affect, Medusa the most; others viewed it as the gaze of their ancestors.

These ancestors had been caged in endless moans, but no longer. A continent had been lost in burial, but no more. Millions of tons of rock had been shifted, and the sun rose once more over the land, defying time itself as if it was a minor, ice-driven crack at the base of a soaring mountain.


End file.
